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Sunday, March 20, 2016

Didn't we solve this problem before? Why is it USA small business gets less creative every day? When Uncle Sam circa 1992 said super-encrypted (40 bits!!!) software could not be exported from the USA, Sun Microsystems simple farmed out the software work to newly free Russian contractors and then the work was not USA-based so no export controls applied. And then no one in USA had the keys. Brilliant work, Uncle Sam! Is there no Scott McNealy among entrepreneurs today?

So if the government can snoop on the data of foreign customers, they become a party to those contracts, and we can’t control that. We’re just businesses and private individuals. We have no power over what the government does, especially on national security. But it certainly has an impact on our growth. Because you’ve seen it—after the leaks from Edward Snowden, the sales of American cloud companies have been reduced in Europe.

Sigh. Just outsource the work to Russia, or China, of Burkina Faso for that mater, and work around the people who write rules utterly disconnected from reality.